LogFAQs > #950101937

GANON1025 posted...

OK. So if the market is closed, any order you put in won't actually happen until like 8:00 AM the next business day (or whenever the exact time it opens). If that's the case, then is it possible the price of the stock can go up or down before your buys go through? Or is that just not possible?

The stock price is the last price a stock sold for. This is true during both during the day and during extended hours. The stock price won't change until 8 am Monday when the first sale occurs when it could theoretically go way up or down.

What is more relevant is the bid and ask. The bid is the highest amount a person is currently willing to pay for the stock with a limit order, the ask is the lowest a person is willing to sell for. Usually during the day they are relatively close to each other. During extended hours there can be a sizeable gap though, like 11/13 or something of that nature. In that case if you put in a market order to buy you would be buying at 13 regardless of the "price" of the stock. If you put in a market order to sell you would be selling at 11.

So regardless of what the price of the stock is currently, the stocks ask and bid at opening at open are what matters. Extended hours i generally only do limit orders because there's such low volume they can change very quickly. If you want to buy right at extended hours open, either way a minute and see what the bid and ask are and put a buy limit order in the middle of them if you most likely want to buy, or put it at the ask to buy immediately unless someone beats you to it. If you want to be really risky you can put a limit buy order at a cheap price hoping to strike a deal. It's possible you overpay doing this if it would have opened with a lower bid than your price point

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DPOblivion beat us all.